The smartphone industry today is characterized by a thicket of patents and wars based on those patents. Every day brings a new lawsuit or development between Apple, HTC, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung. The lawsuits span numerous courts and several continents. This 5-page article...

One of the most heated discussions in economics in recent years has concerned the relationship between market structure and innovation. After a half-century of debate and innumerable studies, the consensus is that there is no clear answer to the question. On a concrete level, the uncertainty...

Innovation is crucial to the U.S. economy. But many of our laws and policies are not promoting innovation. This Essay addresses this problem. The first set of proposals focuses on copyright law. The recommendations avoid vague copyright law and suggest the elimination of statutory damages and...

Bert Foer is one of the most influential figures in the past quarter century of antitrust. His founding and development of the American Antitrust Institute (AAI) filled a significant hole in late 20th-century antitrust and served as a useful counterweight to the Chicago School. In addition to...

Standards, common platforms allowing products to work together, are ubiquitous in our economy. But imagine that a company:(1) has a patent needed to use a standard, (2) promises to license the patent on reasonable terms, and then (3) says it was just kidding as it seeks to block the product or...

In my testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, I explained the benefits of legislation addressing anticompetitive conduct that brand-name drug companies have employed: sample denials, pay-for-delay settlements, citizen petitions, product hopping, and patent thickets. By increasing generic...

The issues presented by the intersection of the patent system and the antitrust laws have never been as pressing as they are today. The number of issued patents is skyrocketing. Companies are more frequently entering into arrangements with competitors not only to recover their investment from...